Slope Surface Deformation Monitoring Based on Close-Range Photogrammetry: Laboratory Insights and Field Applications

Slope surface deformation monitoring plays an important role in landslide risk assessment and early warning. Currently, the mainstream GNSS, as a point-measurement technique, is expensive to deploy, resulting in information on only a few points of displacement being obtained on a target slope in practical applications. In contrast, optical images can contain more information on slope displacement at a much lower cost. Therefore, a low-cost, high-spatial-resolution and easy-to-implement landslide surface deformation monitoring system based on close-range photogrammetry is developed in this paper. The proposed system leverages multiple image processing methods and monocular visual localization, combined with machine learning, to ensure accurate monitoring under time series. The results of several laboratory landslide experiments show that the proposed system achieved millimeter-level monitoring accuracy in laboratory landslide experiments. Moreover, the proposed system could capture slow displacement precursors of 5 mm to 10 mm before significant landslide failure occurred, which provides favorable surface deformation evidence for landslide monitoring and early warning. In addition, the system was deployed on a natural slope in Lanzhou, yielding preliminary effective monitoring results. The laboratory experimental results demonstrated the system’s effectiveness and high accuracy in monitoring landslide surface deformation, particularly its significant application value in early warning. The field deployment results indicated that the system could also effectively provide data support in natural environments, offering practical evidence for landslide monitoring and warning.